it's the great pumpkin charlie brown...and from our perspective, it has been great...

If the great Canadian pastime is complaining about weather (and it is), it's been a great year to be a Canadian passing time with complaints.  Weather casters and their critics have been referring to the clement months of 2009 as the 'summer that wasn't.'  There is some truth to that: it wasn't scorching...it wasn't humid...it wasn't all the things we all usually delight in complaining about in the brief weeks where there is no hockey.  (And in our neck of the woods, where we adore Jim Balsillie, where there is something in Toronto that the TimBits league would laugh at, hockey remains a distant possiblity....)

To paraphrase Snoopy (one of the great literary minds of our time), it was a dark and stormy summer.  The skies opened, the air cooled....

Even so, the growing season is what you make of it.
And this year, we did a little experiment....with pumpkins.
Our soil is mostly clay.  We've been dumping in peat moss and triple mix and PC Black Earth and manure in the hope of coaxing the yards into something productive.  The results are mixed, but it is kind of fun.

So when my sweet friend Pam and I got to talking last spring, it occurred to me that pumpkins might be a really good idea.  They throw down good roots (which help to break up clay)...they send forth winding vines (reminiscent of those grown by the Gruesomes in Bedrock, but not so effective at deterring the neighbours who park on the lawn....)...and there's always a chance at something to harvest.

So armed with a package of seeds, a hose, manure and optimism, I sallied forth some time in half past June.  It was a little late, but again, it was a rookie adventure in urban farming.

In went the seeds....

Up came some shoots...

And then - miracle of miracles - blossoms.  A bunch of blossoms.

My sweet neighbour Carrie and I considered them...at length...pondering whether they'd become delicacies for Rascal and Bandit over time. But the blossoms continued. 

The raccoons left them alone (really, they prefer cat chow and bananas) and over the course of the summer, the blossoms continued.  We did get expert advice suggesting that pinching the blossoms would promote better and larger fruit.  We took it under advisement...and left the vines to blossom.  They were lovely. 

In time, we started to notice that the vines were looking shrivelled...but that proved to be a good thing.  Lurking under those spindly shoots were tiny little pumpkins. 

The one in the garden became a buffet.  While we blamed Rascal and Bandit, we came to discover that the gourd gourmet was, in fact, Awesome the Possum.  He enjoyed it regularly over many weeks.  With luck, he's left some seeds that will return next year.

The one near the bird bath remained ungnoshed...as did the one near the driveway (mercifully, unsquished while the neighbour was doing NASCAR maneuvers over the lawn). 

The sweet neighbour (smile and wave, Miss Carrie, smile and wave) suggested leaving the sweet little globes where they grew.  While they are too small for pies or Jack-o-Lanterns, they might prove ideal for reseeding.  She makes a good point...

The experiment has been a success and it was fun to watch over the course of the summer.  We can't carve Junior, but that's okay.

We went up to the dairy farm at the top of Hwy 5 - Sutland Holsteins - and bought Junior some friends.  This way, when he drops seeds over the winter, he'll know what he's aiming for next year.